School Board Discusses Renovating, New Construction and Other Options

Print

Published on November 30 2016 2:09 pm
Last Updated on November 30 2016 2:09 pm
Written by Greg Sapp

The issue of renovating existing buildings or constructing new facilities was a topic at Tuesday night's Effingham Unit 40 School Board meeting.

Superintendent Mark Doan shared that the district has $1.2 to $1.3 million in health and life safety work to be completed in the next six to eight years. The district's maintenance project list beyond that work has an estimated price tag of $5 to $6 million including new roofs at Southside, Eastside and Westside Schools.

Doan shared that regardless of whether renovation or new construction, it's time to decide which course to pursue.

In 2013 when new construction was discussed, four options were considered. One was renovating the junior high school and converting Central to a Grades K-2 building; a second option was building a PreK-5 building and using Central as the junior high building, a third option was building a Grades 3-8 building and using Central for Grades K-2, and the fourth option would be constructing a Grades K-8 building.

Doan has long contended that Unit 40 has too many buildings and that a lesser number of buildings would mean less overhead.

How to pay for whatever plan is agreed upon is another key topic.

When the Effingham County school districts pursued a one percent sales tax to fund building construction and maintenance in 2014, voters rejected the plan by a wide margin. Since then, a number of area counties have enacted the sales tax, including Shelby County and Coles County.

Another push for adoption of the sales tax is an option, but so is raising the health and life safety levy, and so also is utilizing reserve funds the District has in the bank.

If the Board and other school boards in the county were to decide to pursue the sales tax hike, they would have to act no later than mid-January to get the question on the April election ballot. A reminder that all of the districts in a county are involved in such a one percent sales tax hike question; it can't just be pursued by individual districts.

Doan said discussion of the issue will continue at the Board's December meeting.

    --

In regular business Tuesday night, the Unit 40 Board hired Sandra Wieneke to fill a vacancy as District paymaster, and expelled a student for the balance of the school year with the student referred to alternative education.